Dusk had fallen over the Omiya Park stadium on the outskirts of Tokyo last Sunday and the stocky man sitting in the front row on the team coach was getting impatient.

All his players had climbed aboard apart from Ronaldinho who was still working his way along the line of camera crews and reporters.

Everybody wanted to know about his performance against England, his red card and how he felt about being cleared to play in the World Cup Final should Brazil beat Turkey today.

Eventually, the big man on the coach had had enough. He got up from his seat and leaned down in front of the driver.

Luiz Felipe Scolari, aka Big Phil, the Brazil coach, put his hand down towards the steering wheel and pushed hard so that the horn let out two blaring blasts that made everybody jump.

Ronaldinho said a few hasty farewells, made his apologies and got on the bus. It doesn't do to ignore Big Phil.

Brash, hot-tempered and controversial, Scolari has emerged as an unlikely saviour for a World Cup suddenly awash in allegations of chicanery and conspiracy. He's the tournament's anti-hero.

Before the tournament began, it was said his influence would deprive us of the vibrant, entertaining Brazil world football has come to know and love.

That his emphasis on defensive play, his mistrust of skill, his value of determination above all else and his fondness for gamesmanship would help to ruin the image of his country as the purveyors of the Beautiful Game.

"If we have to play ugly to reach our objective, we will play ugly," he said two months ago. "What's the point of a Cup? To be champions."

Too often in the past, his record of success with Brazilian club sides has been tarnished by eccentric behaviour.

He has admitted encouraging ball-boys to throw balls on to the pitch to enhance the time-wasting process in a crucial game.

After one defeat during his time at Palmeiras, he said he was incensed with his players because they had not committed enough fouls.

His tactics were often portrayed as a betrayal of everything the spirit of Brazilian football was supposed to represent.

Also known as the Big Sergeant because of his rabble-rousing simple yeoman style, some greeted his appointment as Brazil coach a year ago with undisguised horror.

Instead, he has effected a rejuvenation of Brazilian football at this World Cup which is rescuing the tournament from the mediocrity threatening to engulf it in its latter stages.

He has done it his way, too. During the group stages, he was so appalled with his team's attitude at one training session in Ulsan that he went to sit in the stands with the supporters.

"Can you believe how crap they all are," he told them. "We don't have to put up with watching this kind of thing."

His histrionics on the touchline are such that Brazilian television giant Globo has a camera fixed on him constantly.

"He says whatever is in his stomach," Brazilian press supremo Riccardo Setyon said. "He is a simple man who is respected because he is honest." More than that, Scolari also appears to have reinvented himself as a coach, inspired by the magic of the World Cup.

Once in the Far East, he abandoned the caution which had seen Brazil struggle through a torturous qualifying campaign when they lost six times in 18 qualifying ties.

By playing Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho together up front, he has provided us with the most inspiring sights of the World Cup.

Rivaldo's goal against England, inspired by the wonderful trickery of Ronaldinho that bamboozled poor Ashley Cole so completely he nearly fell over, stood out like a beacon amid the humdrum strikes.

We have reached a point in this tournament now where football desperately needs Brazil to win another World Cup.

If there was any semblance of justice about it, South Korea would have been eliminated in the quarter-finals against Spain.

Only cheating or the rankest incompetence, depending what your take is on repeatedly bizarre officiating, allowed them to survive until yesterday.

The sense of justice that accompanied their belated exit was heightened by the fact it was Michael Ballack who hammered the nail into their coffin.

Ballack has been one of the players of the tournament.

Germany have exceeded expectations massively.

Despite the brilliance of Ballack and the excellence of goalkeeper Oliver Kahn, a victory for them on Sunday would be a victory for a side that is ordinary at best.

The same thing applies to Turkey. Good enough to trouble England in the qualifying campaign for Euro 2004, without doubt, but not worthy world champions.

England might have beaten Brazil in the quarter-finals if they had played to their potential but Brazil's 10-man victory in Shizuoka proved they were the class of the field.

That was a triumph for both sides of Scolari. The entertainer who helped to conjure Rivaldo's goal.

And the pragmatist who stymied England by selecting Kleberson instead of Juninho in the centre of midfield and then held out with 10 men for half an hour while hardly allowing England a chance.

He destroyed our dream but in doing it, the big bully on the bus kept the spirit of the World Cup burning.